Читать книгу Corporate Finance For Dummies онлайн
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Corporate finance is more than just a measure of money. As you see in this chapter, money is incidental to finance. When discussing corporate finance, we are actually looking at the entire world in a new way — a way that measures the entire universe and the things within it in a way that makes it useful to us. We can calculate things in terms of corporate finance that simply can’t be accurately measured in any other way. Throughout this chapter we talk about the nature of money and how it applies to corporate finance.
Telling a Story with Numbers
Corporate finance is the study of relationships between groups of people that quantifies the otherwise immeasurable. To understand how this definition makes any sense at all, first you have to take a quick look at the role of money in the world.
According to Adam Smith, an 18th century economist, the use of money was preceded by a barter system. In a barter system, people exchange goods and services of relatively equivalent value without using money. Perhaps if you worked growing hemp and making rope out of it, you could give that rope to people in exchange for food, clothes, or whatever else you needed that the people around you might be offering. What happens, though, when someone wants rope, but that person has nothing you want? What about those times when you need food, but no one needs rope? Because of these times, people started to use a rudimentary form of money. So, say that you sell your rope to someone, but they have nothing you want. Instead, they give you a credit for their services that you are free to give to anyone else. You decide to go and buy a bunch of beer, giving the brewer the note of credit, ensuring that the person who bought your rope will provide the brewer a service in exchange for giving you beer. Thus, the invention of money was born, though in a very primitive form.